Joey Barton criticises Ryan Giggs and John Terry at Professional Players Federation conference

Joey Barton continued his transformation into football’s man of letters, or
more accurately 140 characters on Monday, taking to a public platform to
praise the delights of Twitter and lambast the moral failings of some of his
highest-profile colleagues.

Opinionated: Joey Barton's voice is perhaps heard more than ever thanks to the medium of TwitterPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

In an appearance at the Professional Players Federation conference in London that typified the description “wide-ranging”, the QPR midfielder criticised both Ryan Giggs and John Terry for conducting alleged extra-marital affairs.

In a panel discussion ostensibly about the privacy implications of social media Barton said that both players had let themselves down as men by their conduct.

Giggs was revealed in Parliament to have taken out an anonymity injunction to prevent publication of his alleged affair with Imogen Thomas, a Big Brother contestant, and subsequently to have had an affair with his brother’s wife.

Barton said that his conduct was “not right”.

“The Giggs issue in any walk of life is not right,” he said. “The behaviour of the man towards another man, towards his brother, it’s not right, regardless of the player.”

Barton was equally critical of England captain John Terry, who lost the captaincy after his alleged affair with the girlfriend of then Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge was revealed.

Bridge retired from international football to avoid having to spend time with Terry following the revelation, and Fabio Capello subsequently removed the England captaincy because of his disapproval at the incident.

“There was a human element then about, as a man, what you should do either to your friend at work or one of your colleagues,” Barton said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

Barton’s own chequered private life may lead to a lack of sympathy from his peers in the game. He has been involved in two well-publicised attacks on team-mates and was caught on CCTV fighting in Liverpool city centre.

His renaissance continued on Monday, however, as he commented on everything from the relative values of the media towards rugby players, footballers and the royal family, and praised the “propaganda” power of Twitter, the medium through which he has found his voice recently.

The former Newcastle player suggested that despite his low opinion of Giggs’s and Terry’s conduct they still deserved their privacy be respected, and offered an insight into the pressure under which players operate.

He also suggested that media and public interest in footballers was driven by envy.

“There is a lot of envy about what footballers earn, the astronomical figures,” he said. That’s not our fault. I went from being on £300 a week playing in a big league to £6,500 a week.

“No-one taught me how to handle that, no-one taught me how to be a man, I didn’t instantly get that wage increase and become a role model. I was still the same kid from a working-class council estate.”

Referring to England’s hapless Rugby World Cup, a campaign littered with off-field indiscretions, Barton said that footballers in a similar position would been “executed”.

He also urged the media to pursue the Royal family because they “only exist to generate money”.

“If that was an England football team at a World Cup, there would probably have been public executions when they got home.

“’Football’s a gentleman’s game played by thugs’, I hear quite a lot, and, ’Rugby’s a thug’s game played by gentlemen’.

“The minute a footballer steps out of line, I think the media in this country - because of the sums of money they earn and also because of the stigma attached - are really quick to jump on it.”

Of Twitter, he praised the ability to communicate directly with his fans, unmediated by journalists. “Before the only way of promoting a message or an image was through magazines and newspapers.

“It sounds really bad when you say it because it just makes you think of Nazi Germany but it [Twitter] is a propaganda machine. Social media is a propaganda machine.”